"I'm sorry you take it this way," reproved Glure. "I had hoped you were more broad-minded, but you are as pig-headed as the rest."
"The 'rest,' hey?" the Master caught him up. "The 'rest?' Then I'm not the first? I'm glad they had sense enough to send you packing."
"They were blind animal worshipers, both of them," said Glure aggrievedly, "just as you are. One of them yelled something after me that I sincerely hope I didn't hear aright. If I did, I have a strong action for slander against him. The other chucklehead so far forgot himself as to threaten to take a shotgun to me if I didn't get off his land."
"I'm sorry!" sighed the Master. "For both of them seem to have covered the ground so completely that there isn't anything unique for me to say—or do. Now listen to me for two minutes. I've read a few of those anti-dog letters in the newspapers, but you're the first person I've met in real life who backs such rot. And I'm going——"
"It is not a matter for argument," loftily began Glure.
"Yes it is," asserted the Master. "Everything is, except religion and love and toothache. You say dogs ought to be destroyed as a patriotic duty because they aren't utilitarian. There's where you're wrong at the very beginning. Dead wrong. I'm not talking about the big kennels where one man keeps a hundred dogs as he'd herd so many prize hogs. Though look what the owners of such kennels did for the country at the last New York show at Madison Square Garden! Every penny of the thousands and thousands of dollars in profits from the show went to the Red Cross. I'm speaking of the man who keeps one dog or two or even three dogs, and keeps them as pets. I'm speaking of myself, if you like. Do you know what it costs me per week to feed my dogs?"
"I'm not looking for statistics in——"
"No, I suppose not. Few fanatics are. Well, I figured it out a few weeks ago, after I read one of those anti-dog letters. The total upkeep of all my dogs averages just under a dollar a week. A bare fifty dollars a year. That's true. And——"
"And that fifty dollars," interposed Glure eagerly, "would pay for a soldier's——"
"It would not!" contradicted the Master, trying to keep some slight grip on his sliding temper. "But I can tell you what it would do: Part of it would go for burglar insurance, which I don't need now, because no stranger dares to sneak up to my house at night. Part of it would go to make up for things stolen around The Place. For instance, in the harness room of my stable there are five sets of good harness and two or three extra automobile tires. Unless I'm very much mistaken, the best of those would be gone now if Lad hadn't just treed the man who was after them."